Standards

We’re in mourning for the old elite education, right! For actual clever people. For really educated people. For properly cultured people. For people who knew things.

We’re morning the time before the mass expansion. Before the polys were turned into unis. Before mass higher education! Before grade inflation! Before student centred learning. Before fees. Before rankings. Before league tables. Before the managers took charge.

There was slack, back then. There was Time. A whole milieu of the humanities. Wonderful. Intact.

Back when the likes of us would never have got to the uni. Which is as it should be! When the doors would have been closed to us. And a good thing, too! When our sort wouldn’t have dreamed of an academic life. Perfectly appropriate!

The old times! Those postwar decades at the great redbrick universities. At the old civic universities. Staffed by Oxbridge types, parachuted into the provinces. By fee paying school students types. Who could keep the standards up.

And only the best of the grammar-schooled working class types. Only the brightest from the council estates. Dennis Potter and that lot. The Angry Young Men types. Up at Oxford! Up at Cambridge!

When there were Standards – imagine that! When there were Heights to aspire to! When Brilliance was allowed to be called Brilliance! When Genius was a thing! Before Stupidity hadn’t yet become the rule.

When even Livia was contained. Before the university could become a place of her mad fantasies. Let alone the scene of our paranoia. Our masochism. Of our strange fantasies and over-investments.

Before our kind were raised too high. When we would have found sour role as porters, and the like. Waiters and waitresses. Humble types, knowing our station. Doffing our caps. Bowing our heads.